Dancing the Line
by denise1
Summary: Scorched Earth fic
1. Chapter 1

Dancing the Line

By

Denise

Sam stood under the needling spray of the shower, turning her face towards the almost too hot water. No matter how long she stood there, how hard she scrubbed, she still felt dirty. Holy Hannah, what had she done? When exactly had she lost the will to say no? To question orders.

OK, Technically it WAS the military, not a democracy but…well the SGC had always been different. They made their living doing things, going places, most of the world didn't even know existed. And she'd never shied away from questioning the colonel before.

An act he fortunately tolerated.

But when he'd ordered her to rig her reactor to blow up, all she'd done had been to offer a token protest, despite knowing he was violating General Hammond's direct order. When exactly had that thin gray line between right and wrong become so blurred she wasn't even sure if the two were still separate, much less which side she was on?

Damn him. How dare he? He knew how important the reactor was to her. He knew how long she'd worked to make it a reality. He had to know just how hard it was to convert alien tech to human standards. How proud she'd been of her accomplishment.

If it weren't for 'classified' she'd have a Nobel Prize hanging on her wall and more money than Bill Gates from the copyright.

The reactor was going to power Hedrezar's village for a year. It would mean no DHD no longer meant a team would be stranded. A long-term science mission no longer had to rely on firewood or batteries.

This was workable alien tech that just might stifle some of the Joint Chiefs' grumblings and could be used to justify some of the 7.4 billion the SGC cost the American taxpayers. It would finally be something General Hammond could throw into Senator Kinsey's calculating face.

On a larger scale, it just might eventually replace coal as a power source, thus reducing pollution, ozone depletion and global warming.

With all modesty, the Naquadah reactor was probably one of the most important inventions of the past decade.

And he'd ordered her to turn it into a bomb.

An explosive device that would have knocked a sizable chunk out of the Gad-Meer ship, probably causing it to crash, destroying…no murdering, not only a race, but samples of every living thing of a whole planet. Maybe two planets. Genocide…no…Planet-cide? There wasn't even a term for what he'd asked her to do. No term short of Armageddon.

Good God, her crime would have made Hitler look like a delinquent schoolboy…made Alar seem like a harmless cult leader.

And all she'd done had been to offer a few dissenting words. Even Teal'c had gone along with it.

Only Daniel dared to question. Only Daniel had the …brass, to ignore the colonel's orders and keep looking for a way out.

When did she stop questioning?

When did thinking for herself become the exception rather than the rule?

When did independence become co-dependence?

When did she turn into one of those mindless drones she and her classmates had hated in the academy? When did she become a yes man, hiding behind 'I was just following orders sir'?

That's what they said at Nuremberg.

Yes I knew I was murdering people in cold blood, but I was just following orders sir.

Yes Sir. I knew the bomb would kill the Gad-Meers.

Yes Sir. I knew that even if we stopped the ship, the planet's ecology was most likely damaged beyond repair.

Yes Sir. I knew you hadn't authorized a military strike.

Yes Sir. I knew the colonel's orders contradicted yours.

Yes Sir. I knew I was going to blow Daniel to atoms.

Yes Sir.

Yes Sir.

No Sir. I didn't join the SGC to murder a whole race.

No Sir. I didn't spend weeks…months making my reactor work to turn it into a weapon.

No Sir. If I wanted to design weapons I'd have transferred to Nellis a long time ago.

No Sir. I spent hours and hours closing all the loop holes so it COULDN'T be turned into a weapon because I knew the day would come when a reactor would be left behind, like a multi megaton land mine for some innocent alien to stumble over.

No Sir. You are not going to put me into that position again.

Setting her jaw, she turned off the shower, twisting the knobs so forcefully they squeaked in protest.

Grabbing her towel she stalked back to her locker. She had to hurry. She wouldn't have much time.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sam tensed as the door opened. She watched her CO walk into his darkened office. He sat at his desk and snapped on the desk lamp. 'Now or never Sam,' she told herself. She took a step forward, noting how the colonel tensed as his peripheral vision caught the movement. As much as he may kid about being old, there was nothing wrong with his reflexes.

Ignoring his curious look, she stopped in front of him and tossed the folder she was carrying onto the cluttered surface of his desk. When she'd first entered the darkened room, she'd contemplated just leaving it for him to find.

She dismissed that idea almost immediately. If she just left it laying on his desk he'd probably push it aside to read…oh probably the next time there was a blizzard or something and they were marooned on the base… and then only after the batteries died on his game boy.

"Carter?" he asked as he opened the folder, his brow wrinkling as he read the contents. "What's this?"

"Schematics for the Naquadah reactor, along with instructions for how to create the feed back loop," she explained, putting on her jacket. She'd purposefully changed into her civvies before she'd come. And just as purposefully wasn't going to hang around and debate the matter. They hadn't debated anything on the planet.

"So?" he asked, obviously not getting the point. OK colonel. I'll spell it out for you…in words of three syllables or less.

"Sir. With all due…respect, the next time you want to turn one of my inventions into a vehicle for mass murder…you can do it yourself," she stated calmly, then turned on her heel and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

Point made, she walked down the deserted hall, fighting the urge not to make a mad dash for the elevator.

She knew she'd just danced on that thin gray line, just stepped over that boundary between CO and 2IC.

Only four years of comradeship gave her the courage to speak up, not as Major Carter, but as Sam Carter.

And hopefully he'd gotten the hint…because if he ever ordered her to destroy a whole planet again…Major Carter just might cease to exist.

fin


	2. You Don't Know What You've Got

You Don't Know What You've Got...

by

Denise

Colonel Jack O'Neill hopped off the gurney, absently lifting the cottonball out of the crook of his elbow, checking to see if the bleeding had stopped. Seeing a bare drop of blood he tossed the soiled bit of cotton into a waste basket and shrugged on his fatigue shirt.

"I hear you got a happy ending this time," Dr. Janet Fraiser said, making a few notes in his chart.

"Yeah doc. No body count for a change," he replied wryly, remembering the look on Hammond's face when they returned from their last mission and he'd tallied up the green clad figures on the ramp...and come up short.

"Makes a nice change."

"And all of you came back in one piece...for once," she teased, a smile on her face.

"Well since you spent 48 hours straight making sure none of us caught a Goa'uld on 888, figured it was the least we could do," he threw over his shoulder as he walked to the door.

"Colonel," she called. Jack turned, absently buttoning his shirt. "Feel free to make injury-less returns the rule rather than the exception," she ordered gently. He merely tossed her a wave and proceeded into the corridor.

As he made his way down the hall, the events of the last 20+ hours played relentlessly through his brain.

He flinched internally as he flashed back to the frustration and despair he'd felt when he realized their good deed was going to all be for naught.  They'd worked so hard, spend so many weeks trying to save the Enkarens, only to condemn them to death.

By transporting the Enkarens to a new world, a new home, they'd unwittingly perpetrated the cruelest trick of all...they'd given them a month of hope, a month of joy and an illusion of a future, only to take it all away again.

His 'hosts' in Iraq used to do that.

It's true, you really don't miss something if you're not used to having it. People without electricity are content with candles and lamps...until they see a light bulb for the first time.  Drawing water from a well is fine...until your first experience with a tap. Typewriters are great...until you use a computer.

You really don't miss something until it's gone.

He and his fellow prisoners would spend days on end locked into a stuffy communal cell, usually taken out only for a beating or something...else. They'd gotten used to the boredom, the forced inactivity. They were hardly fed enough to survive. Once he'd returned home, it'd been months before he could eat more than a Happy Meal at McDonalds and not feel totally stuffed.  He'd gotten so used to starving, his stomach had shrunk, his body had forgotten what it was like to eat on a regular basis.

They'd barely had enough water to maintain their bodies in the desert climate so bathing was...unheard of. Everyone grew accustomed to the dirt, dried sweat, caked blood and lice.  Filthy was normal. It was seen as a perverted badge of honor. The dirtier you were, the longer you had survived. But every so often the guards would change things.  They'd grab one or two of them, drag them outside, hand them a bar of soap and let them bathe. Then you were shoved back into your stiff, stinking clothes, and you noticed just how dirty they were. You noticed just how bad everyone else smelled. How much you liked being clean. How good it felt not to have your skin crawl. You dreamed about cool running water, about showers.

And you'd do just about anything to feel that way again.

That little tactic broke more men than any beating ever did.

When he'd looked into Hedrezar's sightless eyes, seen the fear on Nikka's face as she and Eliam clutched her swollen belly, he'd felt like one of those cruel jailers from a decade before. He'd given them hope, a new life, a future, only to take it all away.

And he HAD to do something...anything about it.

He'd seen the looks on his team's faces as he made his choice. Known he was pushing the envelope of trust and loyalty they'd developed over the years. And for a while, he hadn't cared. The ends would justify the means.

He knew his career would be over the second he returned home. Hammond may cut him a lot of slack...but not this much. He was going beyond bending orders...he was crushing them into little tiny pieces, maybe declaring war on an alien ship in the process...all in the name of a few thousand displaced Enkarens.

It took Daniel, placing himself in mortal jeopardy...again, to make him stop and think. It was Daniel who reasoned with Lotan, Daniel who came up with a solution everyone could live with...literally.

Why hadn't he thought of it? It was so obvious, quite frankly the best of both worlds. The Enkarens would be returning to their lost home-world, the Gad-Meers would be populating a brand new planet. Everybody would live. No death. No destruction. No war.

Was he so set in his ways that blowing stuff up was the only solution he could find?  Who held an election and nominated him god? Since when did he have the right to choose one race over another? It hadn't been a fast and furious fire fight...his decision had been cold, calculated, planned.

Still deep in thought, he walked into his dark office. He snapped on the desk lamp, sat down, and began to half-heartedly dig through his inbox. Damn, he hated paperwork.

His peripheral vision caught a movement in the corner of the room and his head snapped up, his body tensing in anticipation of an attack.

He relaxed as he recognized his team mate Major Samantha Carter detaching herself from the shadowy recesses of the room and stepping forward, her shoes squeaking slightly on the concrete floor. In the dim light of the single bulb lamp he could see she had already exchanged her fatigues for jeans and a T-shirt.

Without a word she pulled a folder from under the jacket folded over her arm and dropped it on his desk.

"Carter?" he asked as he opened the folder, squinting at the neatly printed schematics contained within. "What's this?" He hadn't asked for anything, had he?

"Schematics for the Naquadah reactor, along with instructions for how to create the feedback loop," she said quietly, putting on the jacket.

Jack shook his head, more than a little confused. "So?" She knew he and schematics didn't get along. Hell he had a hard time programming his VCR. That's why he had her, so he didn't have to struggle through this...stuff.

"Sir, with all due...respect, the next time you want to turn one of my inventions into a vehicle for mass murder...you can do it yourself," she stated quietly, evenly, as she turned and left his office.

The quiet click of the door closing sounding like a bullet in the stillness of the room.

Jack sat there, staring at the neat lines on the paper, the carefully typed instructions of which wire to cross where. Each numbered and diagrammed. It was spelled out so clearly he bet a kid could do it.

"Maybe not a happy ending after all Doc," he whispered into the silence.

fin


End file.
